


Iron Man Is a Fake Ass Gigolo

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Crack, Deaf Harley Keener, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Harley Keener is a little shit, How is that not a tag, Humor, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, YouTuber Harley Keener, a fair amount of cursing, what can i say? harley has rubbed off on peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Hey, FRI, is the camera on?”“I’m sorry, Peter, but my memory is currently at full capacity manning all essential security procedures for Boss.”Tony sticks his head through the doorway specifically to snicker at them. Harley crows at the ceiling.“You just got played!” Harley guffaws. He slithers backwards off the bed and stumbles across the carpet to share a sloppy high-five with Tony.Peter levels an unimpressed, squinty-eyed stare at both of them. “Oh, sure, you get off your ass to slap hands with Tony and make fun of my misery.”“You wanted normal, we’re giving you normal,” Harley says, still snickering like a heathen.“When I said ‘normal’ I meantnot being tortured. Like, people petting my hair and being nice to me and complimenting my shoes and letting me win at Catan.”“Nope,” Harley says loudly. “I draw the line at Catan.”Tony leans in with his arm on the doorknob. “Think of it as therapy, buddy.”Peter scrunches up his face, gesturing in absolute confusion in the air. “Therapy for who?”--Peter and Tony guest on Harley's channel for a Whisper Challenge. It goes as well as anyone would expect.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1394110
Comments: 14
Kudos: 121





	Iron Man Is a Fake Ass Gigolo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notapartytrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notapartytrick/gifts).



> look at me gooo, writing drabbles instead of preparing my lessons for my kiddos tomorrow! whoohoo professor of the year can i get an amen
> 
> this one's dedicated to @notapartytrick, in response to her request for #15 from this [Ways to Say I Love You drabble challenge](https://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/611493370134675456/the-way-you-said-i-love-you): "loudly, so everyone can hear." Meh. It's sort of like that. It's definitely loud. Nonetheless, I hope it made all your hopes and dreams come true!
> 
> This is a sequel to the previous whump/torture fic in this series, [To the Ends of the Earth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487952), but you don't need to read that to understand this (tho you could...for the funsies...i'm just saying...). Also, yes, _yes_ , the one about how Harley went deaf is coming. I promise.

“Is this thing on?”

“I dunno. Go check.”

“No, you go check.”

Peter nudges Harley in the ribs with a toe. “You turned it on, so you go check.”

Harley nudges back with his toe. “Yeah, no, I turned it on, which is precisely why it’s your turn to get up and go check.”

“I am not getting up and going over there just for you to blame me for your mistakes.”

“ _You’re_ a mistake.”

“Ouch,” Peter deadpans. “Ah, me. How will I ever survive without your love.”

Through the glass wall, Tony’s rapidly approaching silhouette casts a shadow over the two boys sprawled in a criss-cross across the guest bed. Tony pauses mid-chew with the swirl of cheese danish halfway to his mouth, and then says loudly through the door, “You know you two mutant ninja turtles can just ask FRI to check...right?”

“Oh, yeah!” Peter laughs with a huff. “Hey, FRI, is the camera on?”

“I’m sorry, Peter, but my memory is currently at full capacity manning all essential security procedures for Boss.”

Tony sticks his head through the doorway specifically to snicker at them. Harley crows at the ceiling.

“You just got played!” Harley guffaws. He slithers backwards off the bed and stumbles across the carpet to share a sloppy high-five with Tony.

Peter levels an unimpressed, squinty-eyed stare at both of them. “Oh, sure, you get off your ass to slap hands with Tony and make fun of my misery.”

“You wanted normal, we’re giving you normal,” Harley says, still snickering like a heathen.

“When I said ‘normal’ I meant _not being tortured_. Like, people petting my hair and being nice to me and complimenting my shoes and letting me win at Catan.”

“Nope,” Harley says loudly. “I draw the line at Catan.”

Tony leans in with his arm on the doorknob. “Think of it as therapy, buddy.”

Peter scrunches up his face, gesturing in absolute confusion in the air. “Therapy for who?”

\--

“Get out of the viewfinder. Nobody wants to see your nostrils, oh my God, Parker.”

Peter wiggles first his left nostril and then his right, filling the entire screen. “This is a test. Testing audio, one, two, three--”

“Testing audio, incoming!” Harley shrieks, and barrels headlong into Peter’s side. Peter swerves back and Harley goes sailing, missing by a long shot, and he lands flat on his stomach over Peter’s knees.

“What the fuck, man.”

“Did you just forget about my sp--my superhuman reflexes?”

Still rolling around and huffing on top of Peter’s shins, Harley somehow manages to arch one leg back to shove a socked foot in the middle of Peter’s face.

“What the fuck! Ew, dude, why do your feet always stink?”

“That’s because some people actually walk, not swing around on silly string in Danskins,” Harley says, crawling up on his knees so he can manhandle Peter down to the carpet.

“Oh, gee, wow, you _walk_?”

Peter has wrestled himself into a cross-legged slump next to Harley with their backs against the foot of the bed. Harley promptly unrolls the cuff of his oversized chambray shirt and slaps him in the face with it.

“We need an intro,” Harley complains. “You’re ruining my intro.”

“You’re just jealous your views skyrocket when I come on your show.”

“I’m not jealous, I’m enterprising. I’m exploitative. Cunning. I see your face and I grab it with my own two bastard hands and sit it in front of the camera because I’m the goddamn wolf of--”

“ _Anyway_ , HI!” Peter yells over him, windmilling his arms at the camera. “I’m Peter. Parker. That’s me. This is my face. Say hi. Today we’re doing the Whisper Challenge!”

“Tell them why we’re doing the Whisper Challenge,” Harley prompts him.

“Oh, yeah. ’Cause we’re doing a charity partnership with this video. We wanna raise funds to support Harley’s project.”

Harley slings a be-denimed arm around Peter’s shoulders and picks up right where the other boy left off. “We’re working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, folks. It’s a thing that Tony and Petey here helped me set up.”

“If you wanna help, just wait till the end of the video for more details,” Peter adds.

From his vantage point, Harley flicks the outer lobe of Peter’s ear. “Now tell ’em the other reason we’re doing the Whisper Challenge.”

“Be...cause...we...wanna whisper?” Peter offers, nonplussed. “And...you promised I could laugh at you. Which I’m holding you to, by the way.”

“There will be neither whispering nor promises on this video,” Harley says. “No, Parker, it’s because I’m freaking Deaf!” And to prove his point, he grabs the hearing aid at his left ear and attempts to fling it off with a flourish. Predictably, it gets caught around his earlobe. “ _Fuck_!”

“Editing that out later!” Peter warbles, and jumps up to help Harley de-hearing-aid himself.

\--

Harley’s silhouette fills the screen at a grotesque angle, upside down, with his sandy curls a mess.

“In case y’all didn’t know, I can’t hear out of the two holes in the side of my head!” he says cheerily. “It’s because I was a naughty boy and I went near an explosive last summer and everything went bang-bang.”

Peter’s voice is muffled but no less horrified in the background. “Please tell me you’re not _actually_ putting that in the intro.”

“On the bright side,” Harley talks over him, still upside down, “I get to tune out this goober and his disgustin’ Yankee accent any time I like.”

He grabs his right hearing aid this time. And--surprise, surprise--struggles with the follow-through on his signature flourish.

“This is gonna be a running gag after this gets on the internet,” Peter says in the most blasé tone ever, crawling over on his knees across the bed to help Harley take off the other one.

“Oh, were you talking shit?” Harley shrugs at the camera. “Sorry…I can’t hear you!”

“Fuck off,” Peter signs at him, tapping his thumbs and eight fingers together and pulling them back aggressively.

“Stop fucking cursing on my channel,” Harley says aloud. “I need the AdSense.”

\--

The sentence is _Iron Man is my favorite superhero_. Pretty easy to read off anyone’s lips, if you ask Peter. Although Rhodey was put in charge of writing out the sentences and mixing up the little paper slips in the baseball cap. So. Compromised impartiality and all that.

“Iron Man,” Harley says with a bored look.

“Uh huh,” says Peter. He winks at Tony, who’s sitting on the bed behind Harley, headphones on and blasting an AC/DC playlist as he waits his turn. Tony looks about five seconds away from blowing either of them a raspberry.

“Iron Man,” Harley says again. He cups his cheek.

Peter raises a look heavenward. “There’s at least, like, thirty-seven more syllables than that, Harley.”

Harley, without his hearing aids, obviously doesn’t take Peter’s comment as part of the original sentence but gets the general gist of his brother’s prepubescent whining. “Iron Man,” he says a third time, quite obnoxiously, “is a...fake ass gigolo.”

Peter is torn between shrieking and crying.

“Whatever he says about me, it’s probably true,” Tony tells Peter, his voice overly loud over the rock blaring in his headphones.

“No, no, no, _no_ , we have been at this for twenty minutes and I deserve to see somebody get this right!” 

“What?” Harley yells. “What did you say?”

“You’re Deaf, Harls! Making me yell louder won’t help!”

Harley gasps. “I am _not_ dead and I do _not_ smell like sauerkraut.”

“Just--just say the damn sentence and get on with it.” Peter gestures impatiently with both arms.

“Iron Man is a fake ass gigolo, boom.”

He and Tony get up to swap places, Tony looking apprehensive but also like he’s being a cool standoffish suburban dad about it. Harley looks about as engaged as a spotted seal pup right before its afternoon nap.

Harley repeats his version--his atrocious, sacrilegious, mind-numbingly appalling version--of the sentence, to which Tony promptly wrinkles his nose.

“Can we get some wine coolers in here or something?” the man says. “Seriously, I feel the burning need to relapse before even deigning to figure out, uh...whatever the hell _that_ was.” He flaps his hand up and down Harley’s general person.

Behind them on the bed, Peter drags his hands down his face, warping the shape of his eyelids and mouth with the motion. “Please,” he groans at the ceiling. “End my suffering. Tony. Tony. Just say the sentence already.” He pokes the side of Tony’s thigh to get on with it.

“Uh--hold on, hold on--Iron Man?--”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Glad to know everyone knows how to read your name off everybody’s lips,” he grumbles into his knees.

“--Iron Man...fainted...fainted when he ate Jell-O.”

“What the fuck,” Peter mouths at the bedspread. “What the fuck, what the _fuck_...”

“Dude!” Harley says, slapping the sheets. “I may be the worst lip-reader ever, but I know you went swingin’ way past the mark by a mile.”

Tony rips the headphones off. “What? _What_. This is Rhodey we’re talking about. Talking about my maidenly tendencies together with Jell-O is _mild_ on his list of crimes against me.”

Harley is still hooting like a chimpanzee. “Petey, Petey,” he wheezes, grabbing his hearing aids and hooking them back on. “C’mon. Tell us. What was the actual sentence?”

“Iron Man is my favorite superhero,” Peter says, glaring at both of them.

“Well, that’s just sad,” says Tony.

“You know what’s sadder?” Peter points an accusing finger at Harley. “You know what _he_ said?”

Harley flings up his hands in defense. “I am Deaf and I will not be held accountable for my actions.”

“He said ‘Iron Man is a fake ass gigolo’!”

Tony’s jaw drops and he rounds on Harley in exaggerated offense. “I beg your pardon, young man, I was a very real and very cringe-inspiring gigolo!”

“I’m telling Pepper,” Peter threatens.

“She knows,” says Tony. “She’s the one who agreed to marry my very real and very cringey ass.”

Harley has his hands slapped quiveringly over his eyes. “Pete--how is it possible to feel third-hand embarrassment this bad--”

“Don’t even look at me, I wasn’t the one who came up with _fake_ or _ass_.”

“’Cause you’re both,” Tony says conversationally, yet another snack materializing in his hand. He flashes them peace signs. “All right, I’m gonna bounce. Lovely audience, I hope you enjoyed feasting your eyes on our puffy faces, you know how to donate, check the link down below, yada yada yada. I’ll turn over the floor to these two kiddos to explain the more serious parts of this project.”

In the middle of his speech, Tony manages to shuffle off-camera. He pops back into frame a couple seconds later wheeling in on--inexplicably--a black office chair. “You two, holler at me if either one of you ends up blind or asphyxiated. Or if FRIDAY decides to set this whole place on fire because she’s had enough of you.” And then he wheels away.

“Wait,” Peter whines. “Where’re you going?”

Squeak, squeak, squeak. Half of Tony’s shoulder and ridiculously coiffed hair appear back in frame. “I’m Iron Man,” Tony says with a sniff. “Off to do...Iron Man things.”

“I had Mrs. Pepper child-proof lock your suits downstairs,” Harley informs him.

“I hate you!” Tony yells childishly, gesturing like a child, from the hallway.

Peter is quick to rebut with one of his choice expletives in ASL. “I love youuu!” he croons simultaneously at the door.

**Author's Note:**

> so just so you know I was imagining this to have the exact same chaotic energy as Dan, Phil, Louise and Joe's [Whisper Challenge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2zZRDF0Hw) on YouTube. If not, I have failed you.
> 
> Did this make you giggle? Did you facepalm at these idiots? Let me know if you will!! I love snickering with y'all over my own stupid humor >:) -kaleb
> 
> muh tumblr: theoceanismyinkwell  
> muh insta: kc.barrie


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